The Largest Minority

June 23rd, 2009 by Guest

A universal health care system based on the single-payer model appears to be a bridge too far for President Barack Obama.

A single-payer system, such as Medicare for everyone, would provide health care for all.

President Lyndon Johnson had the courage to weigh in with all his clout to win passage of Medicare and Medicaid.

President Roosevelt put all his chips on the table to win passage of the Social Security Act that makes the elderly more secure.

All around the world, governments have long made medical care available for their citizens. Why not us?

Obama clearly has no stomach for the political battle that any single-payer plan would ignite. So he’s endorsed a step that would allow the government to provide health insurance coverage — not health care — to eligible people. Such government-sponsored health insurance is being considered in Congress as it writes health care reform legislation.

While the public plan option gets full consideration in Congress, the single-payer model has been unwelcome at the White House or on Capitol Hill.

Obama said part of the fierce opposition to health care reform has been fueled “by some interest groups and lobbyists — opposition that has used fear tactics to paint any effort to achieve reform as an attempt to, yes, socialize medicine.”

He made it clear that his idea of health care reform would allow patients to choose their own doctors and keep their own health plans.

Somehow government bailouts have been more palatable for Wall Street plutocrats who happen to be needy.

Obama stressed in a speech to the AMA in Chicago last week that he does not favor socialized medicine.

Some 47 million Americans are uninsured — many because some employers have dropped coverage in the economic downturn. Others lack insurance because pre-existing illnesses deny them access to private insurance. There also are millions with no way to pay for soaring health insurance payments because they have lost their jobs.

Nearly all Republicans and some moderate Democrats oppose any public plan option. These are the same lawmakers who receive many government-provided perks including health insurance.

In his remarks to the AMA, Obama warned against “scare tactics” and “fear mongering” by opponents of the public plan option, which the President said should be available to those who have no health insurance.

Obama rejected the “illegitimate concern that’s being put forward by those who are claiming that a public option is somehow a Trojan horse for a single-payer system.”

Obama should tear a page out of LBJ’s vote-getting manual and shame the heartless opponents.

The health of all Americans is our business.

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May 7th, 2009 by Manila Ryce

This video contains commentary and footage from the audience not previously seen in this post.

May 6th, 2009 by Manila Ryce

Remember when “no taxation without representation” used to mean something? Yeah, me neither, but the point is that Americans still do not have representation in their own government. Take health care for example.

The majority of American citizens and medical professionals are in favor of a single-payer system, yet the Democratic Party has taken it off the table (just like they did with impeachment and ending the war). Big business is always given plenty of seats at the table, but when an American citizen attempts to overcome this imbalance of power by speaking for their interests of their fellow citizens in our nation’s capital, they are hauled off.

Despite the catchy phrases and idol worship, a government still owned by private interests is not what we call “change”. It’s what we call fascism. In the video above, Democratic Chairman Max Baucus replies to the proclamation that we need single-payer with the retort, “we need more police”. He and the other members of the Senate Finance Committee then erupt with laughter as the worried concerns of this brave citizen are drowned out by the chuckling men in suits.

If you were to pitch that scene to a Hollywood producer he’d say the senators were too unrealistically evil to be believable.

April 29th, 2009 by Guest

There are no more excuses for the Democrats.

The Democrats now admit that they control the procedure in Congress and can pass whatever health care reform they want.

Without one Republican vote

And President Obama can sign it.

What should they do?

They should pass single payer.

Everybody in. Nobody out.

For prevention and treatment.

For free choice of doctors and hospitals.

No more premiums, deductibles, exclusions, co-pays, in-network, out-of-network rigamarole.

No more family medical bankruptcies.

No more pay or die.

No more pay or become sicker.

Single payer is the only system that will work.

It’s the most efficient.

Single payer will cut out literally hundreds of billions in administrative fat, billing fraud and unconscionable profits.

These savings will be used instead to insure the 50 million uninsured and the millions more underinsured.

This will save lives.

Starting with the more than 21,000 Americans who die every year from lack of health insurance.

According to recent polls, the majority of the American people want single payer.

So do the majority of doctors, nurses, and health economists.

So, what will the Democrat leadership do?

They will keep single payer off the table.

Because they fear the insurance industry and the pharmaceutical industry - and want their campaign money - more than they fear the American people.

Or as Speaker of the House Pelosi told reporters last week:

“Over and over again, we hear single payer, single payer, single payer. Well, it’s not going to be a single payer.”

Who is Nancy Pelosi speaking for?

Not for the American people.

Read the rest of this entry »

April 13th, 2009 by Manila Ryce

April 13th, 2009 by Guest

by Johann Hari

Who imagined that in 2009, the world’s governments would be declaring a new War on Pirates? As you read this, the British Royal Navy - backed by the ships of more than two dozen nations, from the U.S. to China - is sailing into Somalian waters to take on men we still picture as parrot-on-the-shoulder pantomime villains. They will soon be fighting Somalian ships and even chasing the pirates onto land, into one of the most broken countries on earth.

But behind the arrr-me-hearties oddness of this tale, there is an untold scandal. The people our governments are labeling as “one of the great menaces of our times” have an extraordinary story to tell - and some justice on their side.

Pirates have never been quite who we think they are. In the “golden age of piracy” - from 1650 to 1730 - the idea of the pirate as the senseless, savage thief that lingers today was created by the British government in a great propaganda heave. Many ordinary people believed it was false: Pirates were often rescued from the gallows by supportive crowds. Why? What did they see that we can’t?

In his book “Villains of All Nations,” the historian Marcus Rediker pores through the evidence to find out. If you became a merchant or navy sailor then - plucked from the docks of London’s East End, young and hungry - you ended up in a floating wooden Hell. You worked all hours on a cramped, half-starved ship, and if you slacked off for a second, the all-powerful captain would whip you with the cat o’ nine tails. If you slacked consistently, you could be thrown overboard. And at the end of months or years of this, you were often cheated of your wages.

Pirates were the first people to rebel against this world. They mutinied against their tyrannical captains - and created a different way of working on the seas. Once they had a ship, the pirates elected their captains, and made all their decisions collectively. They shared their bounty out in what Rediker calls “one of the most egalitarian plans for the disposition of resources to be found anywhere in the 18th century.”

They even took in escaped African slaves and lived with them as equals. The pirates showed “quite clearly - and subversively - that ships did not have to be run in the brutal and oppressive ways of the merchant service and the Royal navy.” This is why they were popular, despite being unproductive thieves.

The words of one pirate from that lost age - a young British man called William Scott - should echo into this new age of piracy. Just before he was hanged in Charleston, South Carolina, he said: “What I did was to keep me from perishing. I was forced to go a-pirating to live.”

In 1991, the government of Somalia - in the Horn of Africa - collapsed. Its 9 million people have been teetering on starvation ever since - and many of the ugliest forces in the Western world have seen this as a great opportunity to steal the country’s food supply and dump our nuclear waste in their seas.

Yes: nuclear waste. As soon as the government was gone, mysterious European ships started appearing off the coast of Somalia, dumping vast barrels into the ocean. The coastal population began to sicken. At first they suffered strange rashes, nausea and malformed babies. Then, after the 2005 tsunami, hundreds of the dumped and leaking barrels washed up on shore. People began to suffer from radiation sickness, and more than 300 died.

Read the rest of this entry »

March 4th, 2009 by Manila Ryce

Health care is a human right. Excluding single-payer experts from the “table” Obama promised we’d have a seat at is frankly criminal under international law and immoral by any standard.

On Thursday, March 5, 2009, the White House will host a summit on how to reform health care. The 120 invited guests include lobbyists for various interest groups including the private insurance industry (AHIP). No single payer advocates from the medical community have been invited to attend (surprise, surprise). Please urge President Obama to fulfill his promise for transparency and openness in government with this letter.

August 6th, 2008 by Manila Ryce

Physicians for Human Rights has reported that in keeping with its policy to cause as much pain and misery as is humanly possible, Israel has been forcing sick Gazans to trade intelligence information about Hamas for medical treatment. The 80-page report lists 32 Gaza Palestinians who were offered such a deal at the border before being allowed into Israel for treatment.

After the democratically-elected Hamas government prevented a US-backed Fatah coup in the Gaza Strip, Israel declared the occupied territory a “hostile entity” and sealed its borders, only allowing residents needing urgent medical treatment to leave with Israeli permission. When taken with the understanding that the situation in Gaza is the worst it’s ever been and that hospitals in the occupied territory are without power for up to 12 hours a day due to the blockade, the exploitation of those in need of medical attention is all the more disgusting.

Bassam Waheidi, one of the residents named in the report, is a 28-year-old reporter who focuses on women’s issues, social affairs, and workers’ rights. Waheidi is going blind and was referred by Gaza doctors to Israel for urgent treatment. When at the Erez border crossing he says he was led to an underground room and interrogated in an hours-long session to provide Israel’s Shin Bet intelligence agency information on militants in exchange for medical treatment to save his sight. Waheidi refused - choosing his dignity over his vision. Israel has not granted him a permit since. Now Waheidi has gone blind in his right eye and is losing sight in the other.

Israel is committing a horrendous crime against humanity by imprisoning a million and a half civilians, half of which are under 15 years of age. What were already dire health concerns in Gaza related to the legacy of occupation, underdevelopment, power cuts, reduce fuel supplies, untreated sewage, groundwater contamination, and reduced access to basic health and medical facilities have worsened significantly under the ongoing siege - an undeniable form of ethnic cleansing manifested through an official policy of collective punishment.

Unsurprisingly, Israel has denied the allegations of forcing Palestinians to spy for medical treatment, citing security concerns as the reason several Gaza residents have not been allowed into Israel. Meanwhile, the “Jewish State” continues to reject its responsibility as an occupier to provide Palestinians with the most basic of human needs under international humanitarian law. This core minimum obligation includes the right to health - a right which would only concern Israel if they wanted to keep their captives alive.

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